Armuth Miklós - Lőrinczi Zsuzsa (szerk.): A Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem Történeti Campusa (Budapest, 2023)

A Központi épület - The Central Building Zsembery Ákos

was a popular master builder, the Czech-born Li pót Havel (excavation, masonry and construction works). Hauszmann cooperated with him in the Curia project, amongst many others. Works were supervised by József Benedicty, royal senior engineer, who took over this task on October 18th, 1906 from Alfréd Jendrassik royal senior engineer. Construction did not start smoothly either. As a result of rivalry between the bricklayer brigades, a strike began in September going on as late as April 20th, 1907. All bricklaying work was suspended during these 7 months. Havel finally hired workers from Galicia and Bukovina to restart works by spring. After the initial difficulties, excavations and the building of concrete foundations were done at a good pace. They kept working even in wintertime by lamplight till late evening. Their enthusiasm is illustrated by the fact that work was only suspended because of holidays and serious frost. Li pót Havel tried his best to make up for the delay, and even so he had to ask for the

A FEDETT UDVAR, A MAI AULA I THE ROOFED COURTYARD, TODAY'S AULA

prolongation of the deadlines by 3-4 months. With his appr. 200 bricklayers he managed to reach the capping of the basement by July 1907. A specialty of scheduling construction works was that the southern wing was always more advanced than all the other parts of the building. At the end of September here the roof was already in its place, and even so they failed to complete the whole building by the end of the year. According to the construction journal, in March, 1.908.730 people worked simultaneously on the site besides carpenters and those doing excavation. With the facades they reached the crown cornice of the building by June 20th, 1908. By the beginning of 1909 heating was also started as the Boiler House designed by Samu Pecz had already been built.